Clinging on to her job, Britain's May appoints new ministers

A former Conservative rival condemned British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday as a "dead woman walking" as she raced to secure the support she needs to stay in power following a disastrous election.

Ms May called the snap election with a view to increasing the narrow majority she had inherited from her predecessor David Cameron but her plan went disastrously wrong.

May announced later that Gavin Barwell - a former housing minister who lost his seat in Thursday's election - would be her new chief of staff.

But to do so, she'll need to be propped up by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)-a conservative Northern Ireland party that has now promised to guarantee May's government can operate in Parliament (but has stopped short of entering a formal coalition.) The DUP will take 10 MPs to Westminster, potentially putting May in charge by the thinnest of margins.

The strong showing by the Labour Party, which has advocated for closer ties with the European Union single market, is an indication the British are wary of breaking away sharply from the bloc. "Corbyn promised an end to austerity, attracting large crowds".

The DUP once appointed an environment minister to the Northern Ireland Executive who has called climate action a "con" and denied the scientific linking warming to human activity.

Mark Garnett: Throughout this campaign, I had a very big reminder of something I'm old enough to remember: in February 1974 Edward Heath, Conservative prime minister called an election, because he wanted a bigger mandate.

Newspaper headlines saw her as just clinging on.

In an opinion column, The Times said: "This crisis has been years in the making. Yet it has failed to win a majority in five of the past six general elections and it has left the country all but ungovernable as a effect of two extraordinary miscalculations".

ALDE group leader Guy Verhofstadt, who gained notoriety in the United Kingdom for his verbal jousting with UKIP's Nigel Farage in the European Parliament, compared the self-inflicted damage caused by former PM David Cameron's calling of the Brexit referendum with the early elections called by May.

The party's manifesto made clear that it opposed the Conservatives' shelving of the pensions "triple lock" as well as the Tory pledge to take away winter fuel payments from wealthier pensioners.

Kenny is due to hand over power this week to his successor as leader of the ruling Fine Gael party, Leo Varadkar.

So I think given the fact that Theresa May no longer has a majority and that her hard Brexit was rejected by the voters, I think things are going to get a lot more complicated in this Parliament. The DUP won 10 seats.

The deal sits uneasily with some Conservatives because of the DUP's opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

European Union leaders expressed fear that Theresa's shock loss of her majority would delay the Brexit talks, due to begin on June 19, and so raise the risk of negotiations failing.

Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University London, told Saturday Morning the party has a controversial reputation.

"She might start off doing that but the Conservatives might well replace her mid-stream", he told theAssociated Press news agency.

"I can understand how some people switched from supporting them three weeks ago to actually saying, if this is the way they're going to deal with these people I wouldn't be happy".

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